Book Announcement: Foteini Dimirouli, C.P. Cavafy in the English & American Literary Scenes: Authorizing the Other

[MGSA exec. director]

From: Foteini Dimirouli  

foteini....@keble.ox.ac.uk

Full details of a new book on C. P. Cavafy from Oxford Modern Languages & Literature Monographs series:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cp-cavafy-in-the-english-and-american-literary-scenes-9780198851431?cc=gr&lang=en&

C.P. Cavafy in the English & American Literary Scenes: Authorizing the Other

"C.P. Cavafy in the English and American Literary Scenes: Authorizing the Other traces how the Greek-Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy achieved global recognition through the writings and advocacy of E. M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, W. H. Auden, Joseph Brodsky, Stephen Spender, and James Merrill—writers who helped shape the 20th century English-language literary scene. Moving beyond conventional reception studies, the book introduces a model of reciprocal authorization: these influential writers propelled the steady rise of Cavafy's fame in England and America, and in the process reinforced their own identities as authors and cultural arbiters.

Cavafy's poetry intersected with Forster's modernist life writing, Durrell's cosmopolitanism, Auden's and Spender's post-war explorations, Brodsky's meditations on exile, and Merrill's queer aesthetics. Drawing on published works, correspondence, and previously unseen archival material, this book reveals so far unexplored aspects of the texts and personalities involved in Cavafy's legitimation across languages, genres, and historical contexts. It also presents these literary exchanges as a case study through which to rethink canon formation and transnational cultural validation."

Dr Foteini Dimirouli is a Research Fellow in English at Keble College, University of Oxford, where she was previously an Early Career Development Fellow. She completed her BA (Athens) and MA (Durham) in English Studies, followed by a DPhil in Comparative Literature at Oxford, before holding a postdoctoral fellowship at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton. Her research spans twentieth-century English and American literature, as well as modern Greek studies. She has published on the topics of literary appropriation, authorial networks, and the intersections of literature, digital culture, and globalisation.

The first book presentation will take place in Amsterdam, in March 2026:

https://www.nieuwgrieksestudies.nl/nieuws/6-march-2026-book-presentation/

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Vangelis Calotychos

MGSA Executive Director

Visiting Associate Professor

Department of Classics

Brown University